Time Out

We've just returned to the island  after two months of camping in the Rocky Mountains.  We had Dooley the Demented with us and it was quite the experience.  He's still talking about it, in fact. Now we're back and finding out that trying to pick up where one left off can be tricky in a place like this.   Things change quickly here without constant attention.  All four disc brake rotors on the car rusted themselves silly and immobile while parked inside the garage, for example. Rainy season erosion has run unchecked and the driveway looks like a quarter scale version of Palo Duro. The house electricity was turned off for ten days before we returned home.   I've thought of several phrases to try to describe the very organic experience of cleaning out a freezer full of rotting meat after a week and a half without refrigeration.  In the tropics. I think the kindest thing for me to do here is just to leave it at that and not to even mention the similarities to falling face down in bovine road kill.

One thing that quickly caught our attention was how much further south the sun is appearing and disappearing over the horizon, almost ten weeks after we last saw it.

The islands have almost made it to the end of another hurricane season.  And the lucky streak continues. There were  several credible threats, some winds and a lot of rain, but the strongest storms to blow through the islands this year stayed just shy of hurricane status.  And Tropical Storms are quite enough on their own, thanks.   Ten inches of rain doing fifty miles an hour may not be a hurricane, but it's enough to make you scrunch your eyes up  into little slits the thickness of paper when you're trying to walk face first into it. We were delayed two days on our flight out due to the presence of Tropical Storm Cristobal. It made quite the ugly annoyance out of itself.  The evening before our scheduled flight out we stopped by Bob's Bar one last time before our trip. It was all closed up against the raging storm, but we managed to all huddle into the lee for drinks and hor d'oeuvres.  I wish I had taken a photo of that.   I did manage to snap a photo of Nevarde and La Gringa inside the closed up bar area.   The party was on the other side of that wall behind them.  We opened that up once the immediate squall went looking for us downwind.

We continued to work on our old sailboat right up into the end of August. We experienced  Tropical Storms Arthur, Bertha, and then Cristobal, with some admittedly diminishing enthusiasm.  We  finally packed up and left while Cristobal was still blowing, in fact.  That's a story in itself.  I think I'll save that one for the paperback.

 We toyed with the idea of leaving the boat in the water and continuing to work on her unless a major storm threatened. We go through plenty of years here without major storms scoring a direct hit, although they whoosh by to the sides of us all season long. We've gone through three hurricanes of note since we moved here, but all three of those occurred in a two year window. The other seven years we've been living here we had no hurricanes at all. So we were considering taking the chance and hoping that if we needed to haul the boat that the good folks over at Caicos Marina and Shipyard would have room for us on short notice.  And of course that's a gamble in itself. A few weeks of this stuff takes a lot of the fun out of tropical living.   Here's a still image from one of the videos we took during a tropical storm.

Well, the season drug on. All the cruisers with any sense were long gone to someplace safe. Bob  had asked us several times what our plans for the boat were. We looked down the dock, and felt a bit strange to be the last cruiser still in the marina. Kind of like being the last to leave the party.

We'd already begun winding down our flow of supplies and equipment ordered from the US. We got to the point where the Fed Ex truck only stopped by the house three or four times a week. Yeah, we're on a first name basis with the Fed Ex delivery man.

In July we anxiously watched as what later became Hurricane Arthur approached. In early August we closed up and hunkered down while what became Bertha came lumbering across the Atlantic at us. Then in late August we had Cristobal shut us down for several days. And each time we worried about the boat. Should we haul it, or can we control our anxiety long enough to chance another storm? It's not much fun watching these things come right at you while trying to appear normal on a diet of caffeine, fingernails and cheek lining.  Besides, it was getting kind of lonely there at the marina with only a single ferry cat for the perpetually re-stalled West Caicos development, and a few local fishing boats for company.

We were still enjoying our evenings watching the sunset at Bob's Bar, but storm clouds were gathering, again. It is that season, after all.

We finally decided we'd had enough hurricane and uninsured boat anxiety for one season and we took the boat out of the water for a couple of months. We showed up early one late summer morning in August to untie the lines from South Side Marina for the last time in this '13-'14 yachting season. The little diesels awoke with their usual puff of white smoke drifting across the smooth morning water. The smoke is really just steam that fades as they warm up with a rattly little diesel rumble that smooths out about the same time the smoke disappears. The vibrations of the still cool engines shake the hulls like drum heads and cause ripples in the water next to them. You can see them here, in the water just under the blue fender. Bob, we need to talk about that last tie-up cleat.

 

La Gringa had things ashore to do, so I took the boat around to the boatyard without a crew. At least I think that's what she was referring to by calling me crewless. Or maybe it just sounded like crewless, my hearing isn't all that great. I know this is really a small catamaran as these things go, but it's still a strange feeling to be alone on it when I'm accustomed to someone else on board to help with lines and fenders and watching the water.   It just doesn't feel right not to have someone else to shout at and blame things on.   But we had delayed what we knew we should have already taken care of. We have absolutely no incentive to take chances with this boat, and the best place for it during hurricane season is strapped down to the dirt a few steps away from the ocean. I backed the boat out of the slip and turned her to the open water. Pretty easy in an empty marina.

 

 

It's also pretty easy backing out when both engines work. This twin engine capability has been a rarity in our history with this boat. 

The fishermen on board the other boats waved as I slowly motored past. They've watched us working on this boat for the past ten months. It's a pretty small community here. And our friend Stanley (aka Burleigh) lives on the last boat on the left as we leave the marina.

 

 

I've already bumped a hull off one shallow rock out here that surprised me, so I take it very slow and easy until I'm out in deeper water. Here's one of the outer buoys marking the entrance to South Side Marina. After I clear this one I turn hard to the left and head east for several miles through coral heads and rocks. You know, the usual.

 

 

I hadn't really thought my way through the logistics of taking the boat east early in the day. The sun was low and the reflection on the water essentially blinded me to what was directly ahead of the boat. I should know better. Especially without another pair of eyes to help me spot the coral heads. I was having a real hard time trying to discern what was under that glare.   And the way these things work, the glare was  continuously and directly hovering exactly where I was heading next.  Can you spot all the coral heads between me and that distant point of land?    No.  Me either.   And that's the problem.   

The next time I need to make this trip I hope I remember to schedule it for early afternoon, to give the sun time to rise higher before I leave the marina.

After about an hour of white knuckled squinting  I passed the mysterious rock figures on the little hill overlooking the entrance to Caicos Marina and Shipyard. Finally, I was able to turn so that I wasn't being blinded. I could stop munching on the top of my heart every time a dark mass of rocks slid by seemingly just millimeters from the hull. Finally, I could turn into the entrance to the boatyard. I had a 10:00 appointment to haul the boat. I was there at 09:58.

 

 

La Gringa was watching my hopefully unexciting progress from the house. I think she knew that I was being optimistic about my appointment at the shipyard. I also think that she was also a little hesitant to haul the boat out and stop our forward progress.  There's just something counter intuitive about putting your summer toys away in August. Especially in a place where a totally acceptable version of summer pretty much runs year round.

 

The boat did not get hauled as planned. Despite my three weeks on the calendar appointment, they slipped two other boats in front off me. Here's a photo of Twisted Sheets tied up over at the Shipyard, still waiting to be hauled in the late afternoon. Silly old me had made an appointment to have the boat hauled at 10:00 in the morning, and had actually been there waiting at 10:00. And I was still waiting six hours later, when they shut down for the evening. We had to leave the boat overnight, and go through it again the next day. Someone who didn't know me might have mistaken me for irate. It was actually worse than that. 

 

But hey, it's island life, mon. You get over these things. Eventually.  Even on something like this, the third time it's happened.

 

We were back at the yard the next morning, and this time we managed to get the boat hauled out. They have workers  on hand to haul the boat into the slip. We back it in because it fits in the travel lift better. The forestays rub against it if we go in forward. These guys have a lot of experience pulling boats around by their lines.

 

 

Finally the boat is centered in the slings under the travel lift.

 

I've already posted plenty of photos of Twisted Sheets being transported around the Caicos Marina & Shipyard, so won't' repeat that here.   Finally, about 26 hours after my appointment to have the boat hauled and blocked, she was hauled and blocked.  This should be a pretty good spot to ride out all but the roughest of seas over the next few months.

That was basically some of the last things we did before leaving for over two months.   We had a lot of things to do at the house, of course.  Almost as much trouble as the boat.   And they're both more trouble than a simple camping trailer. Lately I've noticed that most of our lifestyle choices seem to incorporate some difficulty in keeping a full set of appliances running.

We are about to put the boat back in the water, and we have a lot of plans for some totally new areas to explore over the next few months.  So the blog should be improving again shortly.

We haven't been back long enough to accumulate some good new sunset photos, so I'll have to make do with one taken right before we left.    Unless, of course, you want to see photos of northern Colorado instead of tropical sunsets.  

Nah, I didn't think so.

Miscellaneous stuff and a big hunk of wood.

I have no clue how many sunrise and sunset images we've taken in the Turks and Caicos Islands, but I know it's a bunch. Pockets full of sunsets. A veritable shirtload. Then we pick one we think is representative of what it looked like to us on that day, and we post it. And then I delete almost all of the ones we don't use. Saving sunset and sunrise photos seems almost pointless. They're old news within minutes. The prettiest of sunsets existed for only the exact instant the shutter opened on the camera. It would have existed longer if I had not deleted the files... and.. oh, well... before I drift off into quantum physics.. Here's a recent sunrise on a nice, almost cloudless day here on the Caicos Bank:



Sometimes I wonder if this entire blog is just an excuse for us to take photos. We've both been 'shutterbugs' for a long time. No real explanation for it, is there? It's a pure hobby. Ongoing attempts to capture images for the fun of it and the pleasure when one comes out like we'd hoped it would. Then, when we have one just nearly right, we look at them, say "oh, nice picture!', and in most cases, never ever look at them again.

This blog lets us do one more thing with the images that we were determined to make anyway. It lets us share them with other people. It's kinda neat for other people to say "nice photo!", and it totally justifies our addiction. So thanks for looking at them, by the way. I guess that's what I was trying to say.

Lately most of our posts have been about specific trips or events. Usually a boating trip. That's probably predictable. I mean, this little country is all about the beaches, water, and reefs. And boats are a huge part of it. When we want to get away and do something fun, 90% of the time here, it involves a boat. At least as far as we're concerned. Now, if you're into golf, Providenciales has a really nice golf course. I've been told by people who are semi-fanatical about these matters that the Provo Golf and Country Club is first rate and has been getting better.

But we don't play golf, so boats it is. Mixed in with some diving, and soon again, fishing. But we also realize that most people who visit a little country like this for a short vacation don't have ready access to small boats while they're here. So I need to talk about something other than boats on this blog. And DIY. The DIY is part of living here, but it's not part of visiting here.

So in this post I thought I would just reach back into the previous couple of weeks and pick out some random images that we recorded that are NOT so much boat-related. These are photos taken between the boat trips, for the most part. These are just some scenes that would not have otherwise been posted here, as they were not part of a specific trip. These are more part of the journey between the destinations. And they are things you can do here without a boat.

On that nice sunny morning briefly immortalized (is that an oxymoron?) in the photo above La Gringa decided to take her camera and the dog and go for a walk down along the local shoreline. She got some nice photos on her little beach walk.

One of the first things to happen when Dooley the Dry and Dusty gets near the ocean is that he jumps into it. The nearest water on this trip was one of the small local marinas. I don't know what he thought he saw across the water. Probably hoping it was something he could chase, or at least bark at. I know it wasn't something he smelled, because that wind drift across the water , and the waves, pretty much tell us that the wind was coming from the left.

Maybe he heard something. I'm convinced that his eyesight isn't that great. Oh but his hearing is outrageously good. I swear, I would believe it if someone told me that dog can hear cheese being packaged at the dairy in Wisconsin.



And like most dogs his sense of smell is also excellent. Terriers are alert little beasties. He's always paying attention to something. And we don't have to worry about a "three second rule" for quality assurance if we drop a morsel on the floor here. It's history before the first bounce.

A little west of the marina there's an area of soft beach. I know I've already expounded the difference between quartz sand and limestone / coral sand, so I won't go back into that. This is soft powdery sand, right in the tidal zone and there are plenty of plants here who find that environment just dandy.



There are also quite a number of animals who happily get through their day while alternating between hours of baking sun and being a foot underwater. These, for example, seem as happy as a clam.....



Or maybe they were just chilling out after flexing their mussels.

This place is a wonderland for people who like to look at sea shells. Or just beach combing in general. We can spend hours on a stretch of beach, just looking at all the interesting stuff that washes ashore from the rest of the world. Here on Providenciales the easily accessible beaches get walked fairly often, but the tide does refresh them a few times a day. And you don't have to go far to get to a beach that might not have been visited in weeks. Months in some cases on the other islands. That reminds me that we want to make a boat trip out to a beach facing the Atlantic on North Caicos and take some photos of the things that wash ashore from the open ocean. It's always interesting stuff. The last time we were there I recognized bits of oceanographic and ASW equipment from at least three manufacturers in the New England area. I'm sure we can get at least one good blog post out of beach combing that one section.

On this stretch of beach on this day, La Gringa was also experimenting with her camera. Trying out the macro functions on a nice unbroken shell, for example:



There is a lot of sea life that can be observed without a boat around here. The marinas are great places to look down into the water. And the water is typically so clear that you can see to the bottom in most places. You might not always see big fish, but you are almost certain to see a lot of little ones. And jelly fish. And crabs.

Looking to the south southeast, those little islands are called the " Little Five Cays". It's easy to get a little confused when you first hear of them. That's because there is another entire area of Providenciales called Five Cays. And those Five Cays are different from the   Little Five Cays. And all the cays have names. Some of the names include the word 'rock'. I am not quite sure yet what the difference between islets, rocks, and cays are. I think it might have something to do with vegetation. Or maybe islets are permanently attached to the earth, and rocks are not? No.... that's not it, either. Sugar Loaf in Rio is a rock. So are Gibralter and Ayer's. I think those are attached pretty well. I've seen islets equated to cays, and to rocks, but we all know Cays and Keys that are bigger than a lot of islands. Hmm. This bears some research.  I guess cays are good for unlocking minds.

This is a good spot for kite boarding when the wind is right. And kite boarding is another thing you can do on vacation here without a boat.  You can rent the gear, and lessons are available. The water here  is very shallow out for several hundred yards offshore. If you watched your footing, you could easily walk out to these little cays. It might be prudent to do the 'sting ray shuffle'. Shoes would be a very good idea to wear on the rocks, anyhow. Trust us on this one.



And remember what I told you about this dog of ours? Well, given that he hadn't been in the ocean for probably ten minutes at this point, he took this opportunity to once again go for a swim:



This dog swims for the pure joy of it. Notice nobody else is in the water but him. Normal behaviour for a Portuguese Water Dog or a Labrador Retriever, but this is a JRT.

Or, at leat he claims to be.  I've also heard him claiming to be a lawyer from New Jersey.

He'll happily paddle back and forth, trying to figure out what we are looking at with the camera. It's difficult to get a beach photo without him in it. And if we yell at him, to 'get out of the picture DOOLEY!!'.... he's likely to just come straight into it.



And his whole attitude about being yelled at is: "You rang? I heard shouting. Something fun going on over here I should know about?"



Well, at least that moved him out of the viewfinder long enough for her to get another angle looking further to the south, without the imposition of a wet dog wedged between you and the mangroves:



La Gringa spotted a large hunk of wood washed up into the bush at the extreme edge of the high tide zone. Of course the moment she started paying attention to it, Dooley the Detrimental had to hop right into the middle of the investigation. As he is wont to do..



It's not easy to tell from these angles, but that appears to be a hunk of very hard wood. It is square on three sides, and I think it was the first piece to be ripped off a hardwood trunk at a lumber mill someplace that has large, hard trees. Once this first cut was made, subsequent passes through the saw would produce boards flat on both sides.

So this is basically a big slice down the side of a tree, that shaved off a big knot. It's got some interesting grain to it. She knows I like that kind of stuff.



This thing was way too cumbersome and heavy to lug back by foot, so it was left on the beach until we could come back with a truck and take a closer look at it.

On the following Saturday morning we were listening to the local "Cruisers Net" on the marine VHF radio when we heard about a 'flea market' being held at Turtle Cove Marina that weekend. We like going to Turtle Cove. That's where a few nice outdoor restaurants are located, and usually the creme of the local boat crop shows up there on their way through. Yes, I know I said I wouldn't talk about our boats in this post. These are not our boats. And this is something to do that doesn't require a boat.   You can do it while vacationing here.   So I'm covered.

I also imagine it gets a little confusing when I jump back and forth talking about different marinas here. I will try to explain myself better, realizing that not everyone reading this knows the island all that well.

Turtle Cove marina is on the north side of Providenciales, protected from the open ocean by the reef that is only around 0.8 miles (1,400 meters) off the beach at this point.

I have talked about it here before. Probably most recently when we posted the snorkeling photos we took while splashing around on Smith's Reef. In fact, this would be a good map for people wanting to go snorkel Smith's Reef.



That line you see snaking between the little patch reefs is the only safe way into Turtle Cove from outside the reef. If you think it looks complicated for that little section above, take a look at the whole route:



The other line coming in from the right side and ending there in an anchorage off the beach is showing how you come down along the beach from Grace Bay to get to this spot. Interesting that there isn't a direct route marked out from Sellar's Cut to the beach anchorage. Might be a classic case of "you can't get there from here". And if you don't know these waters really well, or don't have a nice sunny day with calm seas and clear water, you don't even want to try. The chances of damage are high.

Here's the "latest" Google Earth image of Turtle Cove, showing the island in the middle. I believe the smaller, undeveloped island to the left is called "Little Diddle" Cay. I can't tell you why it's called that, other than to maybe point out that many of the place names here are descriptive. For whatever that's worth to your imagination.



I wrote "latest" Google Earth image, because if you'll notice down in the left hand corner of that photo you can read that this imagery date is 2004. The Google Earth images of most of Providenciales are that old. And this place has changed a lot in seven years. Streets have been paved. There are sidewalks and street lights where there were mud holes in 2005 when we got here. It will be interesting to see the differences whenever Google gets around to updating their satellite images. I guess the good news from our standpoint is that nothing of global interest is happening here to make the world look at these islands too closely. I would hazard a guess that most people have never heard of them.

So, that Saturday morning we headed down to Turtle Cove to the island in the middle, to check out the flea market. We were there fairly early, and the crowd was already arriving.



I very quickly reach my low tolerance for crowds so we decided to take a walk along the dock to see the nice shiny boats that were in the cove that weekend. It wasn't as crowded as some popular weekends during holidays or fishing tournaments, but there were still some fairly serious toys in town:



I think it's another level of boating entirely when the dinghy has a 150 horse outboard.



Or when the stainless steel in the anchoring system is worth more than someone else's entire fleet...

It's humbling.



We love seeing stuff like this. It stokes our imaginations to know that there are people living on boats quite comfortably with a constantly changing world just outside their windows. There's a whole set of sub cultures of motor yacht cruisers that we don't typically get involved with because our interests are more into sail. It's the stuff of dreams, of course. And from a practical standpoint we don't even want to know what the fuel bill is on dream boats like these. I think our own personal ceiling on boating would be well before the point where we would need to consider adding staff.

The big motor yachts are not the only boats that come into Turtle Cove, of course. Plenty of large sailboats come in here. It's not the only protected marina on Providenciales, but it does have the deepest draft. I think you can get a boat that draws 8 ft. into Turtle Cove. Both marinas on the south side near us are limited to between six and seven feet and only at the highest tides.

While strolling around the marina admiring the yachts we noticed Mike Robertson's Osprey Marine Services truck, backed up with the welding cables stretched out.



Osprey was on the job, repairing a visiting catamaran's broken dinghy davit. Welding barefooted, as usual. I've never yet seen him in shoes.   That should tell us something.   I think one has to be pretty good at this to do it barefooted.    For years.     Heck, anyone can weld barefooted for  a few seconds.   But Mike NEVER wears shoes.

Mike specializes in stainless steel and aluminum welding, along with rigging in general. He's a real resource on the island, and is often called out to one of the marinas to fix or fabricate something for a boat passing through. I took this opportunity to ask him about making us a combination grab rail/windscreen frame for our little skiff console. I guess I had better "Sketchup" what I want, unless I can find one already made online to buy or copy.



At home we continue to watch the sea every day. It's always there in the background no matter what we're doing. And it's an ever changing canvas. Besides the sunrises, and sunsets, and the squalls, and waterspouts, and electrical and tropical storms, we get to watch a variety of boats going by every day. We have come to recognize most of the local boats now. For example, recently we spotted this trimaran approaching the boatyard under mainsail alone:



The fact that it was under sail in that location pretty much told us it was a local before it ever got close enough to see the details of the boat. Most visitors would be going slowly here, under power, feeling their way into the channel, on the radio with Bernard or Donovan at Caicos Marina. Only the locals blast along in whitecaps like they know where they're going. We could also tell it was a multi hull rather than a single hulled sailboat by the upright angle of the mast.

Well, before they turned onto a broad reach into the boatyard we knew the boat was the Minx.


And sailing right into the boatyard, and up to the dock, is pretty indicative of someone who knows his boat, and this water, and the wind.



The Minx is a fiberglass trimaran that is probably one of, if not the, fastest cruising sailboat in this area. It was hand built by Mike Robertson, the barefooted welder, and the Robertsons sail it often. We know they took it up to Bermuda and back just a couple years ago. That's a nice little 2800 mile jaunt, before you add in the squiggles and changes in direction.

Now on another day we'll look out and spot a boat like this one:



And we would likely assume that he's probably not local, or if he is he doesn't come to this part of the country often. He probably needed fuel, and draws more than six feet in that monohull. Otherwise, it wouldn't have made sense to travel past Southside marina to get to the Caicos Marina unless they also needed repairs that Southside couldn't handle. They're sailing along downwind on a light air day with a partially furled headsail. So we figure they are being real prudently tentative about our cornucopia of coral, but they like to sail rather than run the motor. It's also possible that this is a boat normally stored at the boatyard and it has just been launched and we never saw that sail before.

See what a fun game we have built into living on this spot here? "Guess the Boat" and no batteries required.

Oh, before I forget, I wanted to ask for opinions on this hunk of wood La Gringa (and Dooley the Detective) found on the beach. After she told me about it, we went down in the small Defender and picked it up. I don't know what kind of wood it is. It's very dense, but obviously it floats or it wouldn't be here.



I was thinking of bolting it to the wall above the door and just using it as a shelf. Or I could run it through a saw and end up with some interesting grained planks to work with.



That's pretty much cleaned our my little stash of un-associated photos from the past few weeks. I tried to keep our boating out of this post, just to give y'all a break from the same old 'wet-dog-gazing-at-thunderstorm photos.

But before we close out this post, there is one little video that was taken from our boat. We were headed over to Pine Cay one day recently in the skiff when we spotted a large group of 8 Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin cruising around in relatively shallow water inside the sand bars at the mouth of Pine Cay cut. We have seen a very definite interaction between the dog and dolphin before. He acts completely differently around dolphin than he does for cold blooded fish. When Dooley sees a fish, he just wants to bite it. Without exception, and no matter how big the fish is. He'll bite a Barracuda just as quickly as he will a Pilchard (that's like a sardine except not in a can surrounded in olive oil or tomato sauce).

But when we encounter Dolphin, Dooley always seems to get into some kind of discussion with them. His ears perk up, and the Dolphin usually head right over to the boat. In this case, the big group of Dolphin we initially spotted broke into two groups of four. . One group held back while the younger crowd came right over to the boat and were obviously very interested in the dog. I didn't think to start the camera until well into it, but they were still talking to Dooley when I started this. One of them was rolling belly up, and I was (excitedly forgetting my self) pointing at it in the video. Maybe he just wanted a scratch. Who knows what Dooley told him?

We had drifted almost over the sand bar, and I had the boat in reverse to pull us back into deeper water. After we were back in deeper water, the dog kept whining and the four dolphin came back yet again. This was the third time they approached the boat. Finally, when the first four dolphin moved off for the final time, the the second, standoffish group came over to see what we were doing, with one of them swimming under the boat. Then they joined the first group. The second group seemed more interested in just checking us out and then moving on. They didn't pay much attention to Dooley, but of course they had probably heard all of the original conversations. Or maybe they were just 'cat people'.


(music is “Stairway to Heaven” by Rodrigo y Gabriela)


That's pretty much the end of this post. I just need a sunset to close it up. I was out washing the boat off one afternoon when I looked up and was convinced we had the makings for a great sunset from that angle. So I got my camera all ready.... and blah. Nothing colorful at all. It looks more like a morning-after photo or something. But I put so much time in to waiting for this to turn into a good sunset I am going to post it anyhow. Another photo never to be seen again:



And that clears the old buffer out and lets me finish with one of La Gringa's nicer sunsets. As usual. Same view, different day:



And please, friends and neighbors, keep those emails and comments coming. It's good to know that someone out there is reading some of this. Otherwise, we would stop doing it.

Hey did you notice not one word about DIY in this post? Awwww.... I just went and ruined that. Okay, then, not two words about it...

November

Joy just pointed out to me that it's been a month since the last post. Wow. I guess it crept up on us. Life just got mundane and busy. We had to make yet another trip up to the USA We were gone for another week and things stack up here when this happens. Something as simple as driving the truck through mud puddles on the way to the airport and then letting it sit unmoving for a week can cause problems. Things freeze up. Thin rusty spots get thinner. Electrons run unrestrained back and forth between different metals. And you should see what the weeds here can do with an uninterrupted week. This was our sixth trip to the US since July. It's kinda caught up with us. But first, to break up this initial rush of type with a graphic....an average sunrise on a calm winter day:



We continue to do the same sort of things for the most part. You guys have seen dozens of photos (hundreds?) of the back of La Gringa's head and t-shirt... so I hesitate to even mention more of the kayak trips. But there have been more.

For example, last week we took Dooley the De-hydranted for a quick trip. As always he got nervous looking at the clouds ahead of us:



And as is common this kind of year, there were squalls behind us as well:



So we decided not to push our luck and get too far from shelter. We took advantage of the clear skies between squalls and moved in to the beach. Dooley the Determined had that look he gets when he's thinking of things like fire hydrants, telephone poles, fence posts. He gets real serious about it:



And finally, with just a little bit of encouragement, he will abandon ship and head directly for the nearest tree:



Other than the odd kayak trip it's been pretty quiet. We did get a late season scare a couple weeks ago with Hurricane Tomas. The initial predictions were a little scary:



And eventually Tomas went directly over the top of East Caicos. Well, it was way weaker than expected and East Caicos is uninhabited. So basically it did little or no damage at all.

This was a very active hurricane season as most people who follow these things know. We were lucky here. We also know that this luck can't hold out forever.

While on the subject of weather, we do get some exciting special effects from time to time. Usually when a strong front moves through. A couple weeks ago I walked out onto the patio just in time to see a huge waterspout just over the Long Bay area, a half mile from us. By the time I ran inside and grabbed a camera it had moved over land and once the spout is cut off from the water source, it drys up pretty quickly and collapses. La Gringa managed to snap this one before it collapsed entirely:



When I first spotted it, maybe a minute earlier, it was still offshore and stretched from those clouds all the way down to the surface of the sea. There was a big cloud of spray around where it was picking up the water.

Since I knew La Gringa was taking still photos, I tried to get a mini-movie. But alas, most of the exciting part was already over.




We know it's just a matter of time before one of these comes right to us. Hope we have a camera ready.

And we have had a fair bit of good weather, too. As we move from the summer/hurricane season into the winter/tourist season we are seeing more and more strange boats coming through.



This one (below) caught our attention just last week. We first heard the Captain calling on the VHF radio, coordinating a tow with the tug. The name of the boat is "Treasure Hunter" or "Treasure Seeker", something like that. I forget.



We are not sure what kind of boat it is, but our best guess is that it's some kind of cocktail barge or floating restaurant. Something similar to the "Willie T's" down in the BVI's, perhaps. We'll find out.

And on the subject of boats.... (notice how I smoothly moved this post from my laziness and excuses into kayaking, weather, and now boats? Are you diverted yet?)

Preacher gave us a call last week to see if we wanted to go hang out on North Caicos for the day on Saturday. We did.

He rolled his boat "Cay Lime" down the ramp at the Leeward Marina:



And we took off across the flats keeping an eye on the weather as usual. That, and the fact that we were doing about 40 mph in maybe 10" of water.



I did play with the movie function a little, to give you an idea of what this looks like:




And of course we took Dooley the Dreamer along. He knows this boat really well and I suspect he prefers it among all of the boats he gets to ride on. He fell right asleep, never even noticing that Preacher has been using the bilge hatch cover as a cutting board for chopping bait and cleaning fish.

In fact, there are a couple of his surgical instruments right there in the photo;




This time we tied up at the old Bellefield Landing on North Caicos. This protected dock is a short distance away from where we usually tie up. It's the first time we have been into this little marina and it's a bit tricky to get into at all:



We found out that this landing is the old, original boat ramp for the area from back before the new Bellefield Landing and Sandy Point marinas were built.

It has an almost new wooden dock and is apparently little used, even on a nice Saturday:



Dooley the Delighted immediately spotted his friend J.R. , or "Froggy" as he is known on North Caicos. Froggy was waiting for us with his van this time. This meant I didn't get to ride in the back of a pickup truck on this trip. But I wasn't complaining. The weather was rainy off and on all day.



Another view of the dock, this from the shore side. You can see how it's tucked in among inlets and mangrove swamps. I suspect it's a good place to be tied up when the wind is howling from any direction.



We spotted an old Quonset hut sitting in an overgrown thicket of trees. Preacher and Froggy told us that it was the old clearing house for the sponge industry in years gone by.



I wanted to check it out a little better, and get some photos of the inside of it, but I only got about halfway to the door before I found myself attached to a native plant. And I don't mean just lightly held, I mean stuck! And bleeding from several places on my ankles.



As I was trying to figure out the best way out of this mess and into the next one, our local tour guides decided to inform me that this particular plant is called "Cats Claw". And Froggy offered the helpful information that I should back away and not try to get through it going in the same direction, or it would rip me and make me bleed. Now, that would have been some good information to have had about two minutes earlier.

Anyhow, it doesn't look that dangerous, does it?:



So when I got home, I looked this stuff up on the internet. I found out the claws are actually little bitty curved things down at the bases of the branches. They were not visually apparent. But man, once you walk into them, you are hooked but good. And will bleed if you don't stop immediately. I also found out there are all sorts of medicinal uses for Cat's Claw.

Good thing, I suppose. I mean, if it's going to rip you open it's kinda nice that it's good for you when it does that. Like a mugger who leaves you with Band-Aids and aspirin.

Obviously, it does absolutely nothing for logic or mental acuity. Because I continued to move a few more feet in the direction of the hut... before Froggy shared the next bit of local intelligence with me..... the hut is full of wasps. He said this in a rising tone of voice that got my attention. It was something like "watch out for the WASPS!!!"

Not nearly as casual as the Cat's Claw conversation.

The word 'wasps' brought me to a halt. I have had some experience with this local wasp tribe. I find myself among them on a regular basis at our house especially when I am out fighting weeds to the death. They (the wasps, not the weeds) generally adopt a live-and-let-live approach unless you break one of their little rules. If you don't swing at them they remain calm. Inquisitive, but non-aggressive. You just have to get accustomed to having wasps flying circles around your head from time to time. If you actually lose your cool and smash or crush one of them, within a very short time there will be three or four more buzzing around you doing the wasp version of a murder investigation. It's best to have put some distance between yourself and the scene of the crime at this point. And of course there is one cardinal rule transgression that they cannot forgive under any circumstances. If you seriously threaten their nest in any way (other than verbal) they attack. The wasp stings I have had here, two years ago, were the most painful I have ever had. And I still have a scar from one of them. Of course I retaliated, and a fierce little turf war ensued. Nobody ever really wins these things, do they.

So, the local wasps and I have somewhat of an uneasy truce going on. I don't thump their nest, and they don't sting me. (I don't swat any of them in front of witnesses, and I carry insecticides to the garage in a plain brown paper bag, too.)

So, respecting the potential seriousness of Froggy's warning, this is as close as I got:



Seems pretty benign in that photo, but at the time it seemed that this little hut had suddenly changed from a tropical curiosity into the opening chapter of a Stephen King novel.

By this time we were ready to head on out to look around the little settlement of Kew for a change. Dooley the Drenched waited until the last moment to jump in the ocean. He wanted to make sure we all got the full benefit of a dose of wet dog immediately after the Cat's Claw experience. Bless his furry little heart.



Okay, this is a chance to test your imagination. Any ideas what this is?:



(I'll post the answer at the end)

Froggy drove us to the little settlement of Kew on North Caicos. This part of the island is known for the number of small farms and vegetable gardens it supports. We turned in to a small parking lot behind the beautiful Grace Temple church:



And entered a path taking us into the fields of a local farm. Preacher led us in:



It has a sort of jungle feeling compared to the rest of these islands. Here Froggy and Preacher are looking for the proprietor. The structures are part of the irrigation system.



Finally we found the owner, the Rev. Courtney Misick....



In addition to the church and the farm, Reverend Misick is very involved with national politics here. He is on the Turks and Caicos Human Rights Committee, as well as serving on the Governor's Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Processing sub-committee.

We got a little bit of a walking tour of the farm. Rev. Misick grows a combination of ornamental and landscaping plants..



as well as sugar cane:



Bananas...



and tall trees full of papayas:



There is a fresh water pond on the property (rare here) and the rubber boots should have prepared us for what was next..



...which was the perfect example of a pig sty. Complete with all the textures, odors and sounds that make pig stys what they are. It started raining harder and we needed to head back to the banana forest for some cover. But before we left La Gringa did snap a photo of someone's future ham sandwich:



Down by the small lake there are several flocks of ducks:



and before we left we chewed up some sweet sugar cane....



The afternoon was starting to stretch out and the wind was picking up as Froggy drove us by Horse Stable Beach. The place was deserted and the few photos we took were all taken from within the public shelter there. Out on the beach the wind had picked up to the point where stinging grains of wind blown sand made it too uncomfortable to explore. And the clouds were getting thicker and slowing down only enough to make a nervous wreck out of the dog.



So knowing we had a few miles to boat before being back on our home island, we loaded back up in Froggy's van and headed back to Bellefield Landing.

Oh, did you figure out what was in that photo I showed you earlier? Here's a huge hint:

Froggy did it.



When we got back to the landing, the tide was so low that we had about eight inches of water under us leaving the mangroves. Preacher did his usual thing, tilting the motor up and doing huge S-curves to keep the hull rolled over to a side. This gains a couple of inches clearance by raising the outboard slightly. Preacher is a master at it. It probably would have been hair-raising.... if I had any hair.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.

I know I mentioned the unusually high number of DIY jobs I have been taking on lately. I won't bore you with all of the little ones. But maybe those of you involved with auto mechanics will appreciate how stuck this universal joint was on one of the trucks. It was totally frozen up in one axis. My task (after taking a couple of hours to get the prop shaft out of the vehicle) was to get that ugly rusty thing on the left out and that nice new shiny thing on the right installed.



I tapped on it. I squirted oil on it. I heated it with a butane torch. I put a socket up against it and wailed on it with a three pound sledge hammer. Repeatedly. I threatened it, and made rude comments about it's ancestry. It would not budge.

So I put a cutting wheel on an electric grinder, and finally managed to actually cut the thing into two pieces while it was still in the driveshaft (Sorry, old bean, I meant 'propshaft') yoke. Finally I was able to drive it out with a hammer.



And while I was concentrating on cutting through this near solid hunk of steel without breaking the high speed wheel or damaging the drive shaft.... I smelled smoke. Well, there were a lot of sparks flying from the grinder. Then I felt heat. And then I looked down and realized I had set my clothes on fire. Right through a t-shirt, and starting on my shorts:



I may have reacted slowly to being on fire, but I quickly made up for that with enthusiasm. I started by dropping the grinder and slapping on my own ribs with two greasy hands, while hopping around the garage and shrieking. Overkill, perhaps? By the time the fire was out, Dooley the Disconcerted had dramatically demonstrated his determination to duck, divert, dodge and distance himself from it all. He skedaddled on me, but to be fair I probably looked fairly frightening to a small animal that has recurring nightmares about thunderstorms from years ago.

Well, that's pretty much some of what's been going on around here. Things are looking up, photo-wise. The annual Conch Festival is this coming weekend, and we usually get a few pix from that. We have a new, improved kayak headed this way and should be able to extend our range a bit on some of the explorations we have wanted to make. We still plan to snorkel and photograph the Coral Gardens dive spot for people who like the idea of viewing the reefs but don't want to charter a dive boat. And this is the busy part of the year visitor-wise. We have no plans to leave the TCI in the next few months, so I am hoping we can generate some blog posts on a regular, and more frequent basis.

We also continue to add experiences among the local merchants, and I am thinking there must be some good material showcasing local businesses that might be of some interest. We actually do interact with local professional quite often. I think perhaps we forget that what has become common and everyday for us might still be of some interest to someone else. For example, I recently had to have some slack taken out of a sports coat I hadn't worn in over five years. We didn't think it newsworthy at the time to document the whole experienc. But in retrospect, it WAS an experience. To give you an idea, this is what you see approaching the tailor shop:



Looks just like the tailor shops in your neighborhood, right? Well, I was in and out of there in five minutes, got my jacket back later the same afternoon, and they did a good job at a fair price. Would I use them again? heck yeah.

( I have no information about the electric stove out front. 'Cooking the books'? Creating hot new fashions? )

And I just realized we don't have any real recent sunset photos, so I am hoping I can sneak in another one of La Gringa's sunrises instead.